Extensive travel often requires a traveller to handle their own luggage in walking through airports, hotels, or other various assembling and marshalling areas. The luggage is usually heavy when fully loaded and, therefore, a traveller often uses a dolly truck, bell-hop, or sky-cap to transport the luggage through these assembling and marshalling areas and to their destinations. These methods of transporting the luggage, however, are sometimes impractical, difficult, expensive, or burdensome to the traveller.
To solve this luggage transporting problem, wheels and retractable handles have been added to luggage to enable the traveller to easily transport the luggage through airports, hotels, and the like. Some examples of early types of wheeled luggage may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 2,925,283 by Stilger entitled "Luggage On Wheels"; U.S. Pat. Re. No. 28,757 by Cassimally entitled "Trolley Case"; and U.S. Pat. Re. No. 29,036 by Hager entitled "Luggage Transport Structure." Some types of wheeled luggage, such as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,087,102 by Sprague entitled "Hand Carryable Travel Container Convertable To Rollable Cart" and U.S. Pat. No. 4,314,624 by Royet entitled "Wheel-Mounted Luggage", have added retractable wheels to enhance the portability of the luggage. Others have attempted to strengthen the pulling or handle mechanism as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,048,649 by Carpenter et al. entitled "Luggage With Pull Handle." Still others have applied the wheels and handle directly to garment bags to improve their portability as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,406,353 by Walker entitled "Wheeled Garment Bag" and U.S. Pat. No. 4,538,709 by Williams et al. entitled "Wheeled Garment Bag."
Some of the recent popularity of wheeled luggage has developed from the increased popularity of airline travel. A frequent problem that particularly occurs in airline travel, however, is that the Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA"), for example, has guidelines that only allow a passenger to bring two carry-on bags into a passenger compartment of an airplane when boarding. A traveller, however, often would like to have multiple pieces of luggage, including pieces such as wheeled luggage for traveling through airports, a garment bag for suits or dresses, a briefcase, a portable computer, or additional luggage which does not require checking, loading, and transporting the luggage by the airline itself. Also, the traveller often is faced with the decision of packing more belongings, i.e., clothing, files, etc., than they can physically carry versus making sure they have all the belongings that may be needed sure inclement weather, business situations, or the like arise during travel. If three or more pieces of luggage are needed, the traveller must check at least one of the pieces with the airline. This requirement of checking luggage with the airline itself may slow eventual departure from the airport as the traveller waits to disembark from the passenger compartment and also waits for the luggage to be unloaded by airline personnel, may cause the traveller to be late for or miss scheduled meetings, and entrusts the luggage with a third party, i.e., airline personnel, which entails risk of damage or lost items.
Additionally, the two pieces of luggage that the traveller chooses to carry into the passenger compartment must be sized to fit either beneath the passenger's seat or in the overhead storage area above the passenger's seat on the airplane. If the luggage pieces are too large or if the traveller wants to pack additional items in the luggage, he once again must check luggage through the airline. Further, the traveller may also experience problems with transporting the additional luggage through various marshalling areas and the like.